Silent Faces, Painted Ghosts

by Kathy Shuker

  ‘What is it you’re supposed to say...?’ The woman stopped and put the brake on the pram, ‘...Cheer up, it might never happen? Such a silly thing, isn’t it? Not helpful at all.’

  She smiled cheerily to reveal uneven white teeth. The blue trousers belonged to a pair of dungarees and on her feet she wore worn yellow espadrilles stretched lumpily around bunions. Her frizzy white hair had been pinned up on one side with a red butterfly clip.

  Terri stood up. A quick glance into the pram revealed an assortment of art materials and canvases. She was relieved to see no baby.

  ‘You must be Celia,’ she ventured.

  ‘Yes dear. And you’re Terri. I’ve seen you about.’ The woman wiped her hand down her dungarees before offering it to shake. ‘Paint gets everywhere,’ she added genially.

  Terri took the hand and felt her own shaken in a surprisingly strong grip.

  ‘Thought I’d take advantage of the sunshine and get out painting.’ Celia glanced round appreciatively. Her height and build brought Peter inevitably to mind; her manner was strikingly different.

  ‘It’s a nice morning,’ remarked Terri.

  ‘Isn’t it? Do you paint?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘What a shame. It always makes me feel better. My brother driving you crazy, is he? Well, don’t let him get you down. He can be a complete bastard sometimes but you mustn’t take it personally. Lindsey’s the only person he doesn’t shout at.’ She shrugged. ‘Probably because he hardly ever talks to her. Well, I suppose Angela usually manages to escape too – which is infinitely more surprising. I was hoping to see you but then you needed time to settle in. Angela doesn’t like me in the house. Spoils the joy in the visit really but there you are. She denies it of course.’

  Terri became aware of Celia scrutinising her face minutely, eyebrows raised, her left hand fingering one pendulous red ceramic earing.

  Terri shifted uncomfortably. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘No, no problem.’ Celia flashed a smile. ‘I was right.’

  ‘Right about what?’

  ‘You said on the phone that you don’t know about the family?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? I thought that was what you’d said.’

  ‘I did. I meant no, I don’t know anything about the family.’

  ‘Really? You are sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ said Terri coldly.

  ‘I thought perhaps your mother might have said something.’

  ‘My mother? Why on earth would she have done that?’

  ‘Well...you know...’ Celia appeared momentarily disconcerted, then produced another smile and shrugged. ‘It was just a thought dear. So tell me all about her, your mother.’

  ‘Tell you about my mother?’ Terri shook her head, cross now. ‘Look, I’m not going to discuss my mother with you. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go.’

  Before she could move away, Celia reached out a hand and laid it on Terri’s arm.

  ‘Don’t be offended dear. I meant no harm. I just like to know...things.’ She grinned. ‘Well, doesn’t everyone? Still it is good to have you here. Do come and see me if you fancy it sometime. I live in the pigeonnier over there. No ceremony; none of Angela’s airs and graces.’

  Celia took the brake off the pram and walked away without looking back. Terri watched her go, frowning. As she turned away, she noticed a shadow at the window in the bedroom above the drawing room. Someone had been standing watching them and had just moved away.

  *

  On the Monday, Sami delivered the painting racks to the studio and they were surprisingly good, beautifully crafted. Peter was working and looked up, glaring, as Terri voiced her thanks and indicated where she wanted them put. When Sami left she followed him outside and asked if it was possible to have another trestle table in her room. She had decided to create a timeline for Peter’s life: a physical, at-a-glance map of his career with paintings marked against one side of it and dates and important life experiences on the other; the relationship between the two would be immediately apparent. It would make the movement of his career easier to plot. Perhaps the physicality of it might even encourage Peter to focus on the task in hand.

  Sami nodded and immediately turned to leave.

  ‘Can I have it by tomorrow morning?’ Terri asked him in her best French. Over the weekend, she’d overheard Angela complaining that Sami kept putting jobs off and that the swimming pool should have been cleaned and ready for use by now. There was a real risk she would never get the table if she didn’t press the point now.

  ‘Demain matin?’ he grumbled. ‘No, tomorrow is not good. No.’

  ‘But it’s important for Monsieur Stedding’s retrospective,’ she pleaded. ‘I need the table to do the work. Please?’

  Sami’s dark eyes examined her face, then he touched his cap and walked away.

  But Terri had forgotten about the Tuesday morning life class. Stuck in her office the next morning, having finally located the owner of one of the paintings on Peter’s list, she was on the phone to an elderly lady when she heard Peter shouting in French and the less distinct sound of someone else’s voice in reply.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry Mrs. Thripton-Brown, I didn’t quite catch that...’ She covered her free ear, trying to listen, ‘... yes, of course I’ll put it in writing to you and I’ll make all the arrangements... yes, Mr Stedding is very grateful to you, thank you for your help. I’ll speak to you again soon.’

  She finished the call just as the door was thrown open.

  ‘What the hell is going on here?’ bellowed Peter from the doorway. ‘What do you mean by arranging to have this done on a Tuesday morning?’

  Terri got to the door and looked past Peter to see Sami in the studio with the huge top of a trestle table balanced against his shoulder, waiting, gaze fixed on the floor. She eased her way past Peter into the studio and became aware of the eyes of all the life class students on her. Even the languid naked model on the chaise longue was glaring at her.

  ‘Of course, the table. I am sorry. But it’ll only take a minute to set it up.’

  ‘Only a minute,’ repeated Peter, eyes protruding in anger. ‘I have to ask, do you actually understand English? Because if not I can’t see how we’re going to be able to do anything remotely useful here. I said I wouldn’t have my classes disturbed so what do you call this?’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. But I didn’t do it intentionally. I forgot about the class.’

  ‘You forgot about the class. God Almighty, you’re a complete liability.’ He glared at her and then gestured at Sami to continue, muttered in French to him and turned away. He walked back to the class, saying something to the students about ‘half-soaked women’ which provoked a ripple of laughter.

  Back in her office, showing Sami where she wanted the table put, Terri found she was shaking and folded her hands under her armpits in an effort to control them. A series of emotions vied for supremacy: anger, embarrassment, frustration. For the rest of the morning she stayed in her office. Struggling to concentrate, she made a note about the telephone conversation with Mrs Thripton-Brown and began laying out the timeline using sheets of card she’d bought at the weekend. Using separate blank cards she positioned the few paintings to which she could definitely apportion a year and tentatively marked in a couple of others. In an effort to make them immediately identifiable, she even did a quick line sketch on each one of the basic form of the painting. It was a start but there was precious little to fill in yet. Around half-past eleven, she was disturbed by a light knock on the door and Luc came in bearing a mug of coffee. He laid it on her desk.

  ‘Thought you might need one,’ he murmured. She thanked him but refused to meet his eye and he left without another word.

  Ten minutes later she heard Peter’s raised voice again, apparently describing some important approach to their naked subject. She tried to ignore him and carry on. Looking at the timeline it was obvious just how much there was to be
done if this exhibition was going to be a success and, without Peter’s input, the whole thing was going to be meaningless. Otherwise, he might as well just pick a few pictures at random and put them up as and where there was a space. Perhaps that was all he wanted: not a structured retrospective but an exhibition of his most famous work in no particular order.

  But Peter didn’t need her for that so why bother to put up with his temper and fight him all the way? He was making a fool of her. The laughter of the students still rang in her ears. She couldn’t go back to London but surely she could find a job somewhere else? She had qualifications, experience; she had a few contacts. And being the supposed curator of a disorganised and meaningless retrospective was not going to help her career one jot.

  These thoughts churned round in her head for the rest of the morning. She heard Peter dismiss the class just before one and was intending to escape up to the house when he thumped the door back and walked straight into her office.

  ‘What on earth were you thinking of?’ he said roundly. ‘The one morning in the week when I will not have any disturbance - I thought I’d made that abundantly clear.’ He looked round suspiciously. ‘What do you need another table for, anyway?’

  ‘But it’s not the one morning in the week, is it?’ Terri’s eyes danced with anger and her cheeks flushed with heat. The cork had come out and all her frustrations were starting to bubble out. ‘You won’t have any disturbance any morning or at any other time. I am kept completely side-lined. How can I do my job like that?’

  ‘I made...’

  ‘Let me finish. I can’t discuss anything with you without making an appointment and I can’t even make the appointment. But if you expect me to help you produce a good retrospective we have to work as a team. It requires mutual respect and it seems the respect is only going one way at the moment, from me to you. I made a mistake this morning and I’m sorry. But I apologised. And instead of letting it go you made fun of me in front of your class. That wasn’t necessary, nor was it very professional. I’m open to constructive criticism when appropriate but it should be delivered in private. And if you can’t co-operate enough with me to get the basics of this exhibition set out, there is little point in me continuing to waste my time here.’

  Peter was glaring at her, that involuntary twitch developing again in his cheek. For a moment she thought he was going to hit her and she fought her fear and the desire to back away.

  ‘I don’t see...’ he began.

  ‘I’m giving you my notice,’ she said. ‘I shall leave in two weeks as stipulated. I’ll do what little I usefully can till then and I’ll put it in writing this afternoon.’

  There was silence while they stared each other out then Terri walked as calmly as she could to the door.

  ‘As you wish,’ Peter said coldly to her back.

  *

  Peter raised his paintbrush to the canvas, tried to focus on what he’d been doing before but let his arm fall. He dropped the brush on his work-table and stared at it without seeing it. The nerve of the woman. Terri’s words kept replaying through his head and he was stunned. All that anger and contempt directed at him. It wasn’t necessary, nor was it very professional. He winced as the words paraded across his mind again, but when he thought of the way he’d behaved he wondered if he had indeed gone too far. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

  He got up from his stool, wandered across to Terri’s office and stood in the doorway, taking in the open laptop on the desk, the notebook and pen, his own notebooks carefully stacked in separate piles and the newly installed table, already covered with her latest device. He went inside and approached the desk. On the pad he saw Terri’s small, neat writing recording her conversation with a Mrs. Thripton-Brown. He flipped back through the pages and saw other notes of phone calls and a record of her visit to the gallery in Nice. There was a sheet with a number of questions, entitled: Ask Peter. There was a list of galleries to ring too, together with the titles of paintings they had handled. Many of them were already ticked and notes had been scribbled in alongside, sometimes with more names or numbers. Propped up against the wall by the door, he saw that she had put four paintings chosen from the studio. Each one had a label stuck to the back of the frame. She had achieved an impressive amount in a small space of time. He crossed to the new table and saw her carefully marked and annotated timeline with the painting cards placed in on one side. The sketchy line drawings of his work were comical in their simplicity but he saw nothing amusing today.

  He turned away, lost in thought, left the studio and headed slowly back up the hill for lunch.

  *

  With work over for the day, Terri had a long shower, wrapped herself in her cotton dressing gown, threw herself on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She’d typed and printed out her letter of resignation and had left it on Peter’s worktable when he wasn’t there. Ever since, she had wondered if she’d done the right thing but kept reassuring herself that she had. Even so, she was surprised to feel so deflated. She ought to be pleased: the charade would soon come to an end and she could get a proper job somewhere else.

  But she had the unpleasant feeling that though her unusually eloquent tirade might have won her the battle, Peter had in fact won the war. It was she who had blinked first. And then, of course, there was the prospect of returning to London and Oliver, and the thought sickened her stomach. She could pretend that she could go anywhere but the reality was not that easy. In London she did at least have a home and she would be sure to find some kind of work. It was a desperate feeling. Perhaps she’d been stupid.

  ‘I don’t have to go back to London,’ she said defiantly to the ceiling. ‘There might still be something in Paris. What about New York?’ She’d had some good reviews in the American press for her portrait exhibition. They might open a few doors for her though, of course, that had been three years ago. She was being unrealistic, dancing on hope.

  Her thoughts drifted back to Peter’s retrospective. Frustratingly, having seen all his brilliant canvases round the studio and watched him working, it was clear that it could have been a truly great exhibition, a really fascinating project. It might even have got her work noticed...though only if he’d co-operated, she reminded herself. Cross with herself for wallowing in her misery, she got up to find her laptop; she needed to start looking to see what jobs were available.

  She’d just bent over to pick up the computer when two short knocks rapped the door and she looked round sharply; no-one ever came to her room except Corinne and her housework was done for the day.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Terri.’ It was Peter’s booming voice. ‘Can I have a word?’

  Terri tied her gown more firmly around her waist, smoothed down her wet hair, and walked to the door. She opened it just wide enough to look out.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Yes...if you want.’ She stepped back, pulling the door open.

  He walked past her to stand in the middle of the floor. He was holding her letter in his hand and he fingered the paper, staring vaguely towards the patio doors. The room looked much smaller suddenly. He turned and fixed her with his pale eyes.

  ‘I believe I owe you an apology,’ he said gruffly. ‘I...well, I have a temper. Sometimes it goes too far.’ He hesitated as if he wanted to say something else. The silence lengthened. He cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Terri frowned, silent, unsure how to take him. She’d never heard him apologise before.

  ‘And I don’t want you to leave.’ Peter gestured with the printed letter in his hand. ‘I’m sure we can work something out.’

  Terri’s frown deepened.

  ‘Do you mean that?’

  ‘Of course I mean it. I want the exhibition to be good. It’s...it’s important.’ He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘And I think you will do it very well.’

  ‘But only if I can get your co-operation,’ she said.

  ‘And you shall h
ave it,’ he said grandly, raising his chin.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently. ‘Didn’t I just say that you would?’

  Terri stared at him, still uncertain.

  ‘So?’ he pressed. ‘What’s the answer then: will you stay?’

  Still she hesitated but knew she’d be crazy to refuse. ‘Yes, all right, I’ll stay,’ she said eventually.

  Peter tore the letter in two with a flourish and gave it back to her. He met her gaze for a second, nodded, and left. For a minute or two she felt elated, as if everything had changed. Then doubt slowly crept up on her again and she wondered if it had.

  Chapter 6

  Angela surveyed the long formal table in the dining room critically. It was laid with white linen, shining silver cutlery and sparkling crystal glasses. An elaborate floral arrangement stood in the middle and each setting had a rolled linen serviette in a napkin ring and a name holder. It was Easter Saturday and dinner was planned for eight-thirty. As usual, Corinne had come in to help with the cooking and it was she who had laid the table. While the French woman was almost obsessive about the way the food was prepared and presented, she was markedly less fastidious about the table. Angela eased round to the further side and straightened a knife here, a spoon there. The napkin in one of the rings looked badly rolled and she pulled it out and redid it. Her dinner parties were important to her; they had to be right.

  When she was first married, young and flushed with her new position as the wife of a famous portrait painter, she had invited creative people to dine: artists and potters, sculptors and writers, designers and poets. She had expected them to be interesting, had played with the idea of sponsoring a Bohemian circle, but had quickly abandoned it. She’d been bored rigid. These people lived in a world she couldn’t inhabit and sometimes she was sure they excluded her intentionally. They were unpredictable too, outlandish, wild and unconventional. Angela found it threatening; she was conservative in almost every sense of the word. She stopped inviting them. These days, her guests were from the ex-pats society to which she belonged: stockbrokers and engineers, businessmen and property developers, sportspeople and entrepreneurs – all people who had escaped to the south of France for the sun. The most creative thing they did was indulge in a few theatricals. Angela had long harboured a desire to be an actress; she sang rather well too. Her dinner parties gave her the chance to indulge herself and her like-minded friends. While they drank pre-prandial cocktails they would all have a chance to perform.